Teen Sues State For Forcing Her Into Legal Relationship

A teenage girl is suing a US state for allegedly forcing her into a legal relationship with the man who had forced sex with her.

The unnamed victim from Massachusetts was aged 14 when she had forced sex at her home in 2009 by Jamie Melendez, 24, who was then 20, before she became pregnant and eventually gave birth to his child.

The man who had forced sex with her met the schoolgirl at a church youth group in Norfolk in the state and was sentenced to 16 years’ probation and later ordered to pay $110 a week in child support to her by a family court.

But last year Melendez filed a petition in a family court to argue that he should have visitation rights if he is forced to pay child support to the girl. She is expected to now have to fight this in family court.

He also offered to no longer request these rights if the child maintenance order was made void. His victim was a middle school student at the time of the attack but recently graduated from high school.

The girl’s lawyer Wendy Murphy criticised the original decision to force Melendez to pay child support as ‘outrageous’ and said it framed his behaviour as something ‘other than a serious crime’.

She told ABC: ‘My client is very worried she’ll have to send her daughter off to this man she doesn’t know, and tell her she’ll be going off on visits with the man who raped her mother and created her.

‘She wants nothing to do with this guy. She doesn’t want a 16-year relationship with him.’

The attorney added that the girl is concerned about risking losing the custody of her child if she does not participate in the family court proceedings.

Melendez – who had known his victim for three years before the attack – had gone to the girl’s house when he knew her mother would not be home, and pressured her into having sex with him.

‘She wants nothing to do with this guy. She doesn’t want a 16-year relationship with him’

She had asked a state criminal court judge to order Melendez to pay criminal restitution instead of child support – and free her from any legal relationship or proceedings with him.

But this was refused – and an application for review to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court also failed, as well as a further appeal. She is now suing the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in Federal Court and wants an annulment of the court order, reported Courthouse News.

We understand he technically has rights as the father, but forcing someone into a legal relationship with the man who had forced sex with them is ridiculous.